I run a dual-core, water cooled carPC, running 4- way active crossover (sub, mid-bass, mid and tweet) thru a pair of Xonar D2 soundcards...
My speaker setup (ignoring the sub) has the mid-bass drivers in the middle/forward area of the doors (6.75").
Up on the A-pillars are the 4.5" mids and tweeters.

I'm wondering if I run the AmbiophonicDSP plugin (thru AudioMulch) and just patch it thru the mids and tweets (ignoring the inward firing mid-bass drivers) if I can accomplish the Ambio effect, tuned of course (if possible?) for the offset of the drivers location?

The mid-bass drivers are band-passed at 65 to 800Hz, so imaging would be less of an issue I would think?

Should I also run a second instance of the DSP plugin for JUST the mid-bass drivers, and would I be able to tune them, despite the offset listening location AND the inward firing position?

I was also contemplating kicker panels for the drivers and mids, (removing the door speakers) with the tweeters up on the A-pillar, but I dunno how this would effect sound? Localization and imaging would improve I think, but I really don't want the sound to seem like it's coming from my footwell!

I looked at your pics and I agree with Andy, very impressive, but insane.

Anyway. Robin and I (R did the work and I helped listen) did a bit of experimenting with ambiophonics inside a car and the results were not all that great. The reason seems to be that there are a lot of close reflections that confuse the crosstalk cancelling. We even did some experiments where small speakers were placed very close to the listener, like maybe something one could build into the sun visor of a front seat passenger. That too didn't work because of reflections from the adjacent window. It's helpful to roll down the windows.

Robin as a bit more disappointed with the results than I was. Certainly, the accuracy of the stereo stage is messed up by the reflections in the car, but you can get a wide effect of sorts. It's fine for some electro-music, but I wouldn't want to listen to a Beethoven string quartet.

Since you have a carputer (nice name) already realized, I encourage you to try the AmbiophonicDSP in you car. Experiment with different values of the delay parameter. You may find some magic value by trial and error. Also, the space control will have some effect on the overall equalization. Just that may be a nice enhancement for your listening.

Anyway you look at it, using the AmbiophonicDSP in a car is experimental; you are on the bleeding edge. Please let us know what you find, good and bad.

Thanks for the reply...
I'm processing each channel individually with AudioMulch (active crossover), so I will be running an instance of DSP for each speaker pair (i.e. mid and tweet)...
This will allow a bit more fine tuning as well (or really make it complicated finding the "sweet spot"!!

OK, you will have a lot to tweak. Just be careful with AudioMulch as we have found that it sometimes doesn't keep the timing sample accurate. This probably only is a problem when you use feedback though, and I don't see you doing that._________________--Howard
my music and other stuff

It's kinda hard to explain, but basically the layout is divided into 2 sides, left and right, labeled driver and passenger...to make it easier, forget about looking at it with left/right channel in mind.

When I was 3-way, basically all the left channel routing was low-pass and all the right channel routing was high-pass...
However, now with a 4-way setup, I removed the second pair of tweeters (which was in the rear) and bridged the output to the front mid-bass drivers...

And for the newly added 4" mids, I removed the rear mid-bass patch.

So looking at the layout, right channel is still highs, and left channel is now mids. The mid-bass are bridged thru to the amp (2 lefts and 2 channels right) and the actual speaker then will be bridged across the 2 outputs.

You'll see that I have to use 2 instances of the plugin, one for the mids, the other for the tweets...because of the complicated layout, this is to ensure that each plugin instance is receiving stereo, L&R data.

I'm not planning on running Ambio on the mid-bass drivers in the door, but a 3rd instance would do that.

To reply to the first post, 60-800Hz is going to be a problem for your midbass/midrange. That upper frequency carries too much "stereo" information. In my experience and many others, dedicated midbass in a car should <250Hz but my constraint is even more at under 200Hz or less.

Secondly, since you have dedicated midbass it makes other playback options a good possibility "OSD" (a variation on ambio) studied by Alpine and Yamaha, implemented in real life by Yamaha, Philips, and Marrantz although poorly-speakers too small.

The problem in car acoustics is that you have to utilize good acoustic practices. Electronic processing only gets you so far. I agree that the abilities of ambio are limited in a car, but compared to even the best "stereo" or panned mono setups it can achieve greater results due to the centrally located speakers set farther away from sidewalls than typical setups. If you follow recommended guidleines for setting up stereo setups, a big part to the illusion is keeping speakers away from walls. Furthermore, off center errors are less with center located speakers compared to spaced speakers setups.

OEM's are finally starting to realize the benefits of a center channel to the point they add that extra cost into the vehicle. Home audio accepted this long time ago with the popularity rise of multichannel surround sound and people willing to spend the extra cost to implement it.

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